Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Another Fish

This is a nice 39-pound female King Salmon.

Well, Monday fishing was sort of laid back. We set in glassy water this morning, and just tied up on the buoy and waited for slack to turn the nets, as it was just about an hour till the water stopped running so fast.We turn the nets on these really low tides, because on a couple of the sites there are rocks that the lead lines get to when the water is down, and they can get hung up. We just point the boat against the tide, pull the cork and lead lines over the bow, put a couple of pins up to push against, and steadily move the net the opposite way from what it has been filling. Looking from above, imagine 2 pink buoys as the edge of a mouth. The tight line stretches between them, with just a little sag in the direction of the tide -- the upper lip. The corks make a bigger arc downstream, and form the lower lip. It looks like a whole bunch of smiley faces from up here on the bluff. When we turn the net, we start on the bottom lip and poke it up to where the nose would be. When the tide starts running in the opposite direction, then the smiley reappears, inverted. Us moving it keeps the chance factor down as far as snagging the bottom goes.We caught about a million flounders, that basically just foul up the net. We caught a lemon sole that we filleted for a meal, and somewhere in the middle of getting all this miscellaneous stuff, this nice 39 pound female King decided to stop in the middle of our net. Pretty nice fish for a guy from Montana!We set both our beach nets this morning(Tuesday) on low tide, but no outside nets -- the weather forecast is for 30-50 knot winds, with seas to 7 feet, and we really don't feel up to pulling gear in that! The water is glassy, but the wind is just starting to make new ripples...We picked up 50 razor clams while setting the beach nets this morning, and are frying them up for supper. They are a lot smaller than they were 30 years ago -- continuous picking over the years has reduced the average size by a bunch. Still taste good, though!Well, Em and Todd are supposed to show up Friday -- looking forward to that! Lovie has a swollen knee, and my broken rib talks to me when I cough, but other than that we are having a good time. Miss Willie....